President Obama Reiterates Cloud-First Policy

U.S. President Obama’s proposed 2012 Federal budget included proposals to improve the inefficiencies in government data centers. The Obama administration asserted that cloud computing and data center consolidation will play a significant role in lowering IT costs. The administration plans to reduce the number of data centers by 40 percent by 2015 and move to a “cloud first” policy of adopting light technologies and shared solutions.
In this proposed budget, planned spending on IT is expected to reach $79.5 billion, up 2 percent from 2010 enacted levels of $78.0 billion.

The administration said it is able to keep IT spending nearly at a constant for a while thanks to savings of more than $3 billion from IT consolidation and a planned migration to cloud computing approach.

In addition, the Obama administration also released its Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, which is designed to guide agencies in moving systems to a cloud computing environment. It includes a mandatory evaluation of cloud options before making any investments. According to the report the federal government’s current IT environment is plagued with inefficiencies characterized by low asset utilization, a fragmented demand for resources, duplicative systems, unmanageable environments and long procurement lead times.

The report states: “Cloud computing has the potential to play a major part in addressing these inefficiencies and improving government service delivery” .

Written by federal CIO Vivek Kundra, the 39 page Federal Cloud Computing Strategy defines cloud computing, outlines the decision framework for cloud migration, gives case examples to illustrate the framework, offers strategies on leveraging cloud computing, and identifies the government roles and responsibilities for catalyzing cloud adoption.

2 comments

  1. Ok we try and get Jobs then we try and cut jobs this is a joke cut goverment jobs and just add to unemployment does any one in washington have a clue about the true economic situatuation in america

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